Ngũgĩ Thiong - Wizard of the Crow

Machokali was fairly confident that the words would help clear him of all the false allegations against him. Sikiokuu was equally sure that the words would confirm the charges.

The Ruler was the only one not worried whether the words supported the charges or not, for he had a different and more immediate agenda.

He had read the two volumes that Sikiokuu had given him, and what captured his attention, to the point of its becoming an obsession, was the fact that Tajirika had already collected money from the Marching to Heaven scheme. The unexpected discovery that some people had already profited from the project hit him hard: so people had already started making money from Marching to Heaven and no one had said a word about it? So here I am, roaming the world, my hat in hand, enduring insults from the Global Bank, and these people are amassing fortunes behind my back? How much money had they collected? Who else was involved in the scheme? Those were the questions to which he now hoped to get answers, but he knew that he had to tread carefully in order not to frighten Tajirika and make him retreat into his shell before disclosing the names of his fellow schemers.

So Tajirika was not only at the center of charges and countercharges between Machokali and Sikiokuu, but also at the source of suspicions and resentments in the mind of the Ruler. He sensed the tension but assumed it had something to do with his confession, and, like Machokali and Sikiokuu, he expected to be asked about it. But even the two ministers, familiar as they were with the unexpected ways of the Ruler, were taken aback by the first question from the judge.

“What have you brought us?” the Ruler asked Tajirika almost gently.

“Your Mighty Excellency, they came for me in the morning and I did not have the time to, uh, to…” Tajirika stammered and then stopped.

The Ruler realized what had made Tajirika pause and hastened to put him at ease.

“Don’t worry about coming here with empty hands. Send your gifts later. What I am now asking you is this: what do you want to tell me in the presence of these counselors?”

“About what?” Tajirika asked, puzzled, for he felt that he was being treated as if he was the one who had asked for the audience.

“Whatever weighs on your conscience. Anything that troubles you,” said the Ruler, trying to make it easier for Tajirika to confess about the money. “Do you have a weight in your heart that you want to lay before me?”

The question threw Tajirika into turmoil. He had always dreamt of an opportunity for precisely such an audience with the Ruler, and now he was at a loss for words. Maybe he was caught off-guard by the Ruler’s solicitous tone, which had reminded him of a pronouncement he had heard long ago: Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Or was this a trap? Will I reveal my innermost thoughts and in the process land myself in more trouble? Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. How alluring the words! Relief was being tendered! Where would he start? He went over recent events in his mind-from the humiliation of having his chairmanship of Marching to Heaven weakened to being beaten by women-to see which burden he would first lay at the feet of the Lord. He recalled lying on a cold cement floor under the weight of three big strong women, and he felt the pain of being beaten with renewed force. He thought of Vinjinia, his own wife, being dragged to a dark forest by none other than Kaniürü, his usurper who had him arrested simply for refusing to obey a summons to appear before him. How could Kaniürü dare lay his dirty hands on his wife? This seemed a bigger blow to his manhood than anything else. He remembered that Kaniürü had been acting on behalf of Sikiokuu, and the bitterness of the humiliations from the man who now sat before him almost choked him. He now unconsciously opened his mouth to unburden himself.

“What I don’t understand, even now,” Tajirika said, as if continuing a soliloquy already begun, “is the connection between Sikiokuu and the women of the people’s court.”

“People’s court?” asked His Mighty Excellency, glancing in the direction of Silver Sikiokuu.

“Your Mighty Excellency,” Sikiokuu said defensively, “I have not had the opportunity to brief you fully on everything. I think Tajirika is referring to the women alleged to be beating up men.”

“And they started with me,” Tajirika said in self-pity. “I ask myself: why me?”

While Sikiokuu was baffled and worried by the direction of things, Machokali for his part felt a bit more buoyant, for the conversation was drifting away from the charges of treason. He even felt like laughing at the thought of his friend being beaten by women, but he controlled himself.

“This is not a laughing matter,” said the Ruler, as if he had sensed Machokali’s thoughts. “It is very serious,” he added for emphasis, recalling the drama of shame at Eldares, especially the women’s call to set Rachael free. Somehow these reflections made the Ruler feel closer to Tajirika as a fellow sufferer of shame at the hands of women. “Go on, Titus,” he told him.

Tajirika sensed pity in the Ruler’s voice, giving him the courage and strength he needed to tell the story of his misadventures. He told how the women kidnapped him and then later charged him with domestic violence before sentencing him to several strokes of the cane, and as he now came to the end of his ballad of woes, Tajirika felt overwhelmed by a sense of joy and gratitude at having shared his misery with a sympathetic audience. May His Holy Excellency live for ever and ever, he sang to himself.

“And how does Sikiokuu come into this?” asked the Ruler.

“No connection. Absolutely no connection!” said Sikiokuu, flapping his ears from side to side.

“I am not asking you,” the Ruler told Sikiokuu.

“What I don’t understand is this: why did Sikiokuu stop me from beating my wife? Or let me put it this way. Sikiokuu orders me not to beat my wife. But I, desiring to assert my male prerogative, lay my hands on her. A week hardly passes before these women come for me. And after they punish me, they warn me not to beat my wife, the very same words that I had first heard uttered by Sikiokuu. What a coincidence!” he added in English.

“Those were not real women,” shouted Sikiokuu in desperation, unable to restrain himself. “They were shadows created by the Wizard of the Crow.”

Tajirika looked to the door as if he feared that the wizard might be standing there. Machokali and the Ruler did the same, but the latter pretended not to have heard properly and now fixed his eyes on Sikiokuu. For a few seconds there was nothing but silence.

“Mine were real women,” asserted Tajirika, breaking the silence.

“When did the women beat you up?” Machokali asked Tajirika sympathetically.

“When the Ruler was in America,” said Tajirika, trying to nail the date down.

“But that was when the Wizard of the Crow was in America,” said Machokali, forgetting that Tajirika did not know this.

The Ruler, Sikiokuu, and Tajirika looked at Machokali at the same time but for different reasons: the Ruler because Machokali’s mention of the Wizard of the Crow revived the pain inflicted by the sorcerer’s letter; Sikiokuu because he knew well that Machokali was trying to keep alive a story that was against his interests; and Tajirika because he was hearing about the Wizard of the Crow being in America for the first time. What games were the two ministers trying to play, with Sikiokuu claiming that the women who beat him up were mere shadows and Machokali claiming that the Wizard of the Crow had somehow escaped prison and gone to America? Tajirika thought.